Doesn’t happen that often, unseemly taken with my own wordsmithing as I am, but I ran into an essay that caused me to have one of those W!IWICWLT! moments.

Wow! I wish I could write like that!

(W!IWICWLT!)

Bernie Horn, whose writing I don’t remember seeing before, has laid out an inspiring message for those of us of the liberal persuasion who have felt positively tongue-tied when attempting to articulate our most deeply held beliefs about the morass our nation is in now, and what we should be saying to get out from under the reactionary boot.

Three Words Progressives Can Use to Win Elections

The American dream is not about a society where government secures the greatest good for the greatest number. Our dream is personal. It’s about a poor child delivering newspapers and one day ending up as the publisher. It’s about an unskilled worker attending night school and becoming a successful manager. It’s about individuals and families practicing their religion without interference, getting ahead through hard work, and being able to retire in security and comfort. The American dream is a prayer, a vision, a fervent hope that every individual may be given a fair chance to build a successful life.

The progressive-liberal-Democratic base of voters would gladly accept a communitarian philosophy. I, too, wish that American culture were more oriented toward altruism and community. But it isn’t. A realistic progressive philosophy is one that accepts our national culture of individualism and — nevertheless — seeks to make the American dream accessible to all. How can we envision such a philosophy?

The true and original meanings of those three words: freedom, opportunity and security, have been suborned by the noisy and all too persuasive extremists of the right for too long.